


Is this a dream?

by clexa_is_endgame47



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Dani and Jamie - Freeform, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Loss, Pain, The Lady of the Lake - Freeform, This will hurt, damie - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:35:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27760867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clexa_is_endgame47/pseuds/clexa_is_endgame47
Summary: Everything Jamie went through from the moment she woke up, to the moment she sat at the shore of the lake crying.This is my 5th Bly manor one-shot and I'm so proud of the pieces I've created for this show. I hope you guys are enjoying them too.This again, was painful to envision and write, but I hope it's to your liking anyway.
Relationships: Dani Clayton & Jamie, Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	Is this a dream?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mally09](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mally09/gifts).



There’s that beautiful feeling that takes over your body when you’re shifting between the realms of dreams and wakefulness. It’s like your floating comfortably on a cloud that’s moving to deliver you home. And you’re well aware, ‘home’ was waking up to another day to those dual colored irises of your beautiful wife, your lover of 13 years now, Dani.

So when, out of habit, your hand reached out to touch, to feel Dani’s beautiful presence close, but comes up empty, you find your senses rushing into wakefulness, desperate to find her.

Your eyes open to the soft sunlight pouring into your bedroom. It had to be around 6.30 am given how much light was pouring in from outside.

A feeling of dread takes over in your gut. Dani isn’t in bed with you, and neither can you hear any sounds from the bathroom. You slowly lift yourself off the bed, worry and fear filling you up. And there it was.

A note. A folded, yellow sheet of paper. You reach out, even though you know, the note probably has everything that would break you, forever.

You carefully unfold the letter and read the first line. It’s enough to tell you what Dani had done, where she’d gone, and it’s enough to have your heart currently start to shatter into a million pieces.

You know you’re probably hours late now, but if there was even the slightest chance you could stop Dani from what she was planning on doing, you need to. You absolutely have to.

You’re trembling, even as you get dressed, pulling on a pair of jeans, you need to stay focused on your path, and not think the worst. Maybe there was still time. ‘Dani. Please. Please just stay. Just think about me. Please.’ you think as you put on your boots as quickly as possible, grab your wallet, making sure your ID was in, you take the letter with you too, and rush outside to get a cab to the airport.

Everything after that feels like mechanical clockwork. You try not to think too much, not to create scenarios in your head, to believe Dani would still be there when you reach, to believe Dani would spend some time thinking about this decision, thinking about what it would do to you. 

The entire flight though, you have nothing to do. Up until that point, your hands and legs were busy, your mind had been occupied, you had things to focus on to get on the quickest flight to England. But now that you’re here, buckled up in your seat, waiting for takeoff, everything’s blank.

And then the minute the plane takes off the ground, the emotions rush, and you find yourself trying to take deep breaths to calm your racing heart. Tears roll down your cheeks and you stare ahead at the back of the seat before you, you’re looking at the seat, but all you see in your mind’s eye is Dani. Your Dani. Terrified, scared and alone, thinking she HAS to do this. Thinking she has no other option but to… a sob sounds out from your own throat and the young lady beside you suddenly notices your distress.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

You simply nod, and rush to wipe at the tears rolling down your eyes. “yes, sorry, I’m fine” you say.

“You don’t look fine at all” she says, and then she asks a flight attendant to get you water.

“here, have some water, do you want to talk about it?” the kind woman asks, she seems sincerely worried, and you wish you could explain to her, but she wouldn’t understand. No one would understand. How were you supposed to tell them, that your lover of 13 years was on her way to end everything beautiful you’ve ever shared, even if those years had always been graced by a shadow of a curse, a curse that meant a beast filled with rage and sorrow resided in your lover’s heart, slowly taking over every part of her body, mind and soul.

No. no one would be able to fathom what you’ve lived for 13 years.

But Dani. Dani knows. Dani knows what you’ve been through together. Dani knows how you’ve been one another’s crutch. Dani’s been your family, when you thought you would never have anything close to one, after the way things went down in your early years. And you? You would like to think you’ve been Dani’s rock since that dreadful night the beast took over. You would like to think you’ve been one of the reasons she’s stayed around. You would like to think you mean enough and more, that Dani would think twice before doing what she was probably already doing right now. Weren’t you two worth that much? Wasn’t every moment you cherished together worth it, to stay? Stay for one more day.

“Not really, it’s umm... just heart break” you say instead. 

And the woman nods understandingly and says “well, that’s the worst kind of hell if you ask me, but I understand”, with a comforting smile and then plugs in her earphones and respects your space.

You close your eyes and try to think of Dani, your sweet Dani when she’s laying peacefully beside you, when you can hear her soft breath, or look into her eyes, or when you stare at her beautiful smile, you try to recall the last thing you said to one another last night, before you slept, you remember the way she kissed your lips lazily and languidly, smiling into the kiss and whispering her proclamations of love t you, you ticked hers sides playfully and said it back, promised her you’d make pancakes for breakfast today, she said she wanted to help, and you joked about how she’d ruin them if she got near them.

You smile to yourself at the memory, but then a sudden bout of grief begins to creep over, like water slowly trickling down your skin, covering your being, your face contorts in discomfort and your whole body feels like it’s not in your control anymore.

“Dani…” you call out and then you’re awake.

“hey, you dozed off there, had a nightmare?” the woman beside you asks,

And you want to tell her no. You want to tell her that that wasn’t as much a nightmare, as the reality you know is playing out right now. But you can’t explain, so you just nod and sit up straighter.

The feeling of dread has not gone. The one from the dream. It’ lingering on your skin, and you don’t want to think the worst, but Dani and you had become so atune to one another’s emotions, you often feel things she feels, you could never help it, it was the ‘empath’ in you.

And you wonder, if that feeling of dread inside you means that…

No. it can’t be. Not that easily.

The flight lands and you rush out to get a cab that would drive you to Bly. Being back here again, the air, the people, the scents, it hits you hard. But you try to keep yourself focused. You have one goal today. And that is to bring your lover back home to you. No matter what it takes.

The drive is long, and once more, you have time to spend in your own head. You hate it. Because everything inside you screams she’s gone, but your heart, your stubborn little heart has a flicker of hope, and that had to account for something right?

You reach into your wallet and pull out the note again.

It hurst to read. But it is all you have of her for now. And you hold it and read it, again and again, hoping to find comfort in it, but all you feel is pain. Every time you read it, the pain gets even more severe, so much, that by the time the cab rolls into Bly, you’re angry.

You’re angry that Dani would just up and leave. You’re angry that she couldn’t give you one more day. You’re angry that she made this decision for the both of you. You’re angry that she didn’t have the courage to face you, or to try and say goodbye in person.

But deep down. You know Dani’s intentions. Deep down, you know Dani’s just as stubborn as you are. You realize, your anger is not directed at her anymore. You’re angry at yourself because you understand. You understand why she did it. You just don’t agree it needed to happen at all.

You stare at the words of the letter, and then close your eyes. The ache in your heart is constant now, and growing worse as you get closer. It’s deteriorating. You can feel your whole body in turmoil. Every part of you fighting to keep you going until you see it for yourself. Until you have tangible proof. You’re not letting her go. Not now. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

The cab finally reaches the grounds of Bly manor, and you fold the letter up and put it back into your wallet. You pay the driver and get out of the vehicle. You look at the huge manor standing tall before you. The place you’d cared for, for the longest time, and now, it was forever going to be filled with this memory. Whatever this memory was going to turn out to be.

You turn and march forward to where you know Dani would be. The lake. You know Dani had to be there. But you prayed she was ‘there’. You prayed. Because that was all you could do now. Pray and hope she stayed.

But even as you near the lake, you feel an eerie sense of dread again, eerie, cold, and empty, and painfully sad. It’s trying to break through your guard, trigger all those emotions you know are waiting to break out. Dani isn’t here. Dani is…

And so you march in with the same vigor as before. There was still hope. There was still something you could do, you had to try. You just had to. The question was not if you should. It was whether it would work. And you would keep trying till you knew for sure.

You swim your way to the relative center of the lake, and dive in, you don’t care that your clothes feel heavy, and your jeans are soaking through now, and your sneakers feel wrong, you’re swimming downwards, willing your body to move quick, you can feel the air in your lungs catch as you realize how still the water of the lake is aside from the currents you’re causing, and the sun’s light now, making every inch of the water seem clear as day.

And then you see her. Perfect as day. Laying in the weeds at the bottom of the lake, her eyes set on you. But they’re no longer blue. They’re finally both, a matching colour, but they’re not blue. And that breaks you.

The dam within you breaks open and your emotions charge up to the surface. You scream, and your lungs empty out of air, you scream because Dani is right there, but she’s also no longer aware.

You don’t know if she can see you, she must right? You try to reach out, you try to touch her, but she’s unreachable, no matter how far you swim, you scream again, because the pain in your body is becoming more than you can bare. 

You want to lay with her, you want to hold her and tell her she doesn’t have to be here alone, you want to caress her beautiful face and kiss her and stay here with her, even if it means both of you die here.

But survival instinct wins. You hate that her resolve was stronger. Your body’s pulls you upwards even though you want to stay. So you play your last card, “It’s you, it’s me, it’s us” you scream, your tears a part of the lake now, the lake a part of your tears, and you pray it works. Those words.

You pray they work, because if they work, that means you get to hold Dani within you, you get to leave Bly with Dani inside you, you get to keep her for all your life, and you get to protect her from this dreaded lake forever. You will get to decide.

You look at her one last time, and your whole body stops fighting the pull of the lake, you’re moving upwards to the surface of the water and you feel lifeless. Lifeless, because your whole life lays down there in the weeds at the far depth of the lake.

You swim to the shore and your lungs struggle to receive the air, the cold air of the early evening, it’s sharp and it hurts your windpipes, but now pain is omnipresent. It’s all over. You can’t tell one kind of pain from the other.

Everything hurts as you sit yourself down and hate that you’re here breathing, your body catching up with life again, while your lover rests at the bottom of the lake, alone. You just want her to come home.

And as you turn the ring on your finger, thinking about the fact, that you don’t know if it worked, you don’t know if you got her back,

you hope, that the one day, when you look into water, when she’s had her time to ‘be’, she would reveal herself to you again, if she was even in here with you. If the words worked, if she had joined your soul, you’d know, you’d feel it, but right now, you weren’t sure.

And the pain that comes from the uncertainty wrecks your heart now, and you know it will for all eternity.

**Author's Note:**

> What do you think? Would really appreciate your thoughts on this piece in a comment. 
> 
> Also, I wrote a rendition of the letter as another one-shot on my profile. It's called 'Always you'. You could read that after this. 
> 
> Unrelated, my dear friend mally09 has written a new, amazing Clexa fanfiction called "We're taking our time".  
> Summary: Clarke has returned from space after spending 20 years away from Lexa. Little did Clarke think 'Lexa' would be alien to physical affection. 
> 
> Do head on over to her profile to check out the 4-chapter story.


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